Saturday, March 26, 2016

Letter #77--Micrograms

Dear Governor Ducey,

My book
Micrograms, a short book of microessays about micro things, was just published
by New Michigan Press. The micro essays include stories about microsoccer and
microchips and microbursts and microclimates. This little book is part of a
larger book about climate change and other environmental catastrophes and how
little things can make big changes. For instance, at ASU’s Center for
Biodesign, researchers there study how microorganisms can repair polluted
water. Example: Run-off from fertilizer used in agriculture sometimes results
in nitrates in waterways, leading to overstimulation of algae, depriving fish
of oxygen. At the Center for Biodesign, they have found a microorganism that
chemically reduces nitrates back into simple nitrogen. I write about Eric
Glomski of Page Springs who, in building his vineyard, had to study the
microclimates of Oak Creek and the air masses moving down from the mountains
and swirling around the river to figure out where to grow his Chardonnay grapes
best. By studying tiny organisms and making small manipulations, researchers
and vintners can discover ways to rise to these big challenges.

I take
heart in the tiny things. The way my son tucks my hair behind my ear. The way
my daughter scares me with her zombie walk. The way my husband builds a fire in
the wood stove. The small owl pellet I find at the bottom of tree. The quick
look to see, ah ha, there is an owl, or maybe just the wind, but either way, my
eyes have been lifted up: The sky an embracing blue. Even goofy things, like a
ball rolling down the sidewalk and stopping in a crack or the sound of a rock
kerplunking in a lake, these little things, these tiny delights, accumulate to
make the difficult or the bad manageable, even, potentially, hopefully,
fixable.

But then,
there are days when the small things get me down. We did another road-side
clean up on Huntington by Walmart. Cigarette butts, plastic Walmart bag,
Styrofoam coffee cups, plastic bottle, plastic bag, hamburger wrappers,
mini-bottles, plastic bags, plastic bottle, CDs, plastic lids, plastic bag,
plastic bag. So many little things that are discarded, never thought about by
the person letting them go out their car window. How can we make big changes
when we’re still at a seventies level of environmental awareness, Give a Hoot,
Don’t pollute? Or not even there yet?with people tossing their cigarette butts on the ground, dropping their
coffee cups, letting fly their plastic bags, plastic bags, I swear if you spent
two hours cleaning up the road side you would, instead of prohibiting Flagstaff
from banning them, ban the plastic bags from all the land, or at least all of
Arizona. I said to Zoe, “If there were no plastic bottles, plastic bags, or
cigarette butts, there would be almost nothing for us to clean up. No more
orphaned highways in need of adoption.”

I think of
the accumulation of plastic—that plastic patch in the ocean the size of Texas,
the way the plastic turns particulate but never disappears. The way the tiny
plankton eat it, the tuna eat it, the whales eat it. The plastification not
only of the streets and fields and sidewalks but the whole planet, wrapped in
plastic. Preserved, maybe, but, like a 2-liter 7-Up bottle lying in the sun,
getting ever-hotter.

Accumulation
is a neutral term. Things accumulate for the better and for the worse. I guess
the whole system is one of balance. Someone pollutes the water, someone finds a
microorganism to eat the pollutant. Someone tosses a water bottle out the
window, someone else picks it up. Balance, in itself, doesn’t necessarily
register as good or bad, either, and yet, as the legislation has been so
against the many in favor of the few of late, I am hoping the individual actor,
though small, will begin to act, to accumulate, to add up, and tip the scale.